Mobile Home Misery

Sale Of Land Is Forcing Sunshine City Residents To Leave.

She'll pack up her four children, leave their four-bedroom trailer and move into a low-budget motel on State Road 7.

Fealy only has about a year left to pay off the mortgage on her $20,000 home but she must leave it behind.

Along with hundreds of people -- including disabled veterans, the elderly and single moms -- she is being forced to leave her mobile home in Sunshine City, which dead-ends off Broward Boulevard near State Road 84.

Affordable Residential Communities, which has owned the park since 2000, is selling the land for an undisclosed price. They are blaming Hurricane Wilma for extensive damage that would be too costly to pass on to residents, who have until November to leave. The park's management is offering compensation packages that vary with the size of homes and how quickly residents leave.

Sunshine City is just the latest South Florida mobile home community to be sold to developers. Last year, Coconut Creek commissioners rezoned the 29-acre Coral Lake Mobile Home Park, at Wiles and Lyons roads, to make way for 244 town homes and 56 condominiums.

In Margate, 243 homeowners have until Sept. 30 to evacuate the Rancho Margate mobile home park off State Road 7 so townhouses can be built. And in Fort Lauderdale, the 113 trailers and RVs at Floridale Mobile Homes south of State Road 84 eventually will be replaced by townhouses.

According to the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office, there were 20,109 mobile homes in the county before Wilma. That was 389 fewer than in 2002.

"The land has become so valuable and now everybody who owns land is looking to see how can they make more money," said Broward Property Appraiser Lori Parrish. "We have this entire population that have no place to live, working people and retirees. I would be the last person to step on somebody's personal [property] rights, but where are people who work here going to live?"

Scott Gesell, attorney and spokesman for ARC, does not know what the new owners plan for the land at Sunshine City. "It will not operate as a mobile home park," Gesell said.

Fealy is in nursing school and her boyfriend is a waiter. She said she needs the $4,250 compensation check for an apartment and will stay in a motel until the check arrives.

To gather extra money, she spent last weekend at a community yard sale, hawking sundresses that her oldest child, 6, still can wear, toys the children still want and a sewing machine that still works. In the first hour of the sale, she earned $8, which included $5 for a gold ring.

"It's old and ugly and it was an ex's," she shrugged. "We don't have the ability to hang onto anything right now."

Sunshine City has about 250 trailers, but a capacity of 350. Residents say they are frustrated that City Hall can't help save their homes because it's private land.

Residents such as Eileen Cheremka, 71, who has lived here for 17 years with her husband, said they are worried about what lies ahead. She said they live off $1,400 a month in combined Social Security checks, and she still doesn't know where they will move. They have no savings or pension and they spent thousands in renovations after Hurricane Wilma.

She is trying to sell her kitchen stove and Christmas, Easter and Halloween lawn displays for extra money. "We need the money to move," she said.

The 43.6-acre development is in west Plantation, within a few miles of some of the city's most affluent communities, including Plantation Acres, which touts a rural, horse-and-pasture atmosphere with sprawling lots and Hawks Landing, an exclusive gated development.

Pete and Patricia Straut said they would organize another yard sale, probably in June. He is an unemployed, disabled Vietnam veteran. She works three jobs and brings home about $28,000 a year. They say they can't find an affordable apartment.

They have lived in this park for 23 years and paid off their $20,000 mobile home three years ago. They pay about $560 a month for the land their home sits on, as well as water and garbage service.

At last week's yard sale, Patricia Straut rubbed her cheek with a red afghan that was for sale. "This was my mother's," she said. "She's been gone for 15 years."

Straut started to cry and turned her head so her husband wouldn't see. He's having a hard time, too. "He wakes me up in the middle of the night and says, `Where are we going to go?'" she said.

Somebody offered Straut $5 for her ToastROven, but she turned it down because she wanted $20. "As it is, the park's taking my life away," she said. "I don't want people to steal my stuff, too."

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2008.